Photo By Bruce Cummins | PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola Command Services Attorney Lt.j.g....... read more read more
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PENSACOLA, Fla. – Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola’s Fleet and Family Support Center (FFSC) held a drill June 1 designed to improve the quality of air station’s support services during an emergent situation.
The drill, an activation of an Emergency Family Assistance Center (EFAC) at the air station’s Mustin Beach Club, primarily centered around training FFSC staff on responses during and after a simulated weather event, something which FFSC Director R. Train Hatton said is critical to ongoing mission success at the U.S. Navy’s largest training command aside from Recruit Training Command Great Lakes.
“Because it has been a few years since we have conducted a fully integrated drill and the FFSC staff has many new members who have never been involved with an EFAC, we thought it was a great opportunity for training as well as an opportunity to reconnect with partner organizations.”
The EFAC, a temporarily activated entity in response to an event causing relocation through which service members and eligible beneficiaries can receive disaster relief services and information, essentially serves as a one-stop shop. Although the drill was primarily focused on NAS Pensacola’s FFSC, several departments and mutual aid partnerships participated, something Hatton said would mimic a real-world emergency response.
“Several departments are critical to the success of an EFAC,” Hatton said. “Along with Housing; the Navy Lodge; Navy Gateway Inn and Suites (NGIS); the Navy Exchange (NEX); Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR); the NAS Pensacola Religious Ministries Dept.; and Legal; other organizations such as the Navy and Marine Corps Relief Society (NMCRS) and off installation organizations like the American Red Cross play a pivotal role in ensuring our service members are aware of the resources available. These partnerships were tested during the drill, and these relationships will be enormously beneficial during the activation an actual EFAC.”
The streamlined process during the day-long drill involved the intake of role players – volunteers displaced by a simulated weather event – and ensuring they were made aware of services. FFSC employees then directed these volunteers to areas where they were able to discuss their unique situations and receive information or resources. As the EFAC was loosely based on a real-world event which significantly impacted the NAS Pensacola area of operations – 2020’s Hurricane Sally – Hatton said the EFAC drill differs from other exercises in that recovery is the chief focus.
“Several installation-level drills are conducted as a response to an ongoing situation, fast moving events with a limited timeline,” he said. “Our EFAC drill, however, is in response to a situation that has happened in the past we would find ourselves as part of the recovery phase of an incident. This allows us to focus not on the event itself but on the support of the service members and their families.”
Hatton added that the NAS Pensacola FFSC team additionally participated in crisis management and Psychological First Aid (PFA) in-service training for the EFAC drill. The air station’s FFSC is staffed with social workers trained to provide services during a crisis, and all staff members are trained in PFA. He also said that the NAS Pensacola FFSC team reviewed its Emergency Response Preparedness and Emergency Family Assistance Standard Operating Procedures along with the CNIC Emergency Family Assistance Center Desk Guide during the day-long evolution.
NAS Pensacola, referred to as the "Cradle of Naval Aviation," is designed to support operational and training missions of tenant commands, including the Naval Aviation Technical Training Center (NATTC); Naval Aviation Schools Command (NASC); Marine Aviation Training Support Groups (MATSG) 21 and 23 and serves as the headquarters for Naval Education and Training Command (NETC).
| Date Taken: | 06.02.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 06.05.2023 13:55 |
| Story ID: | 446239 |
| Location: | PENSACOLA, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 81 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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